Sweet and Sour Book Selections

The Screaming Staircase (Lockwood & Co. #1)

The Ghostbusters are at it again!
No, really, imagine junior Ghostbusters and you’ve got a good idea of this book.

Summary: For more than half a century, the world has been plagued by supernatural hauntings. Numerous ghost hunting companies and investigations are established to exterminate these hauntings. Lockwood & Co. is one of them. Young agent Lucy Carlyle joins a small, peculiar agency run by the unusual Anthony Lockwood. After failing one miserable case, the agency seeks redeem itself by spending the night in one of the most haunted houses in England, and trying to escape alive. This is the first book in the series.

This was my first Jonathan Stroud novel, and I was highly impressed by the reading. You may be familiar with Stroud’s The Bartimaeus Sequence. Stroud continues to focus on fantasy with his new novel, but in a different way: focusing on the spectres and ghost-hunting. Fans of paranormal investigations will love this intermediate read!

Stroud is brilliant at crafting horrifying and creepy scenes, where the reader is able to imagine the ghosts as if they were in the very room with you. I gasped, I curled in a fetal position, and I read this entire book in less than 24 hours. Immediately, Stroud pulls you in with his story-telling, three-dimensional characters, well-crafted plot, and mystery.

From the beginning, the reader is pulled smack-dab into the action, feeling part of the investigation itself. When the investigation goes sour, the story begins to tell itself from the beginning. The organization of the book is a bit strange. After the action, the reader starts at Lucy’s beginning and how she became involved with Lockwood & Co., which is interesting. The author made a good choice to begin with the igniting incident rather than focus on backstory. It certainly drew me in, so while it was strange, it worked well.

The action doesn’t stop after the first case. The readers follow Lockwood & Co. as they attempt to solve the supernatural mysteries of the hauntings. Things become stranger and stranger, and are certainly not as they should be. Stroud links all the pieces of the puzzle together in one astounding conclusion. This story is a definite read for readers who enjoy a good thrill, chill, and scare!

I honestly have no qualms with the story-telling or content itself, so with that, I award this book a perfect lemonade: 5 out of 5 lemons!